After the Georgetown University Student Association’s decision to end funding for the Collegiate Readership Program was met with widespread student dissatisfaction, GUSA administrators and cabinet members are surveying student interest and working with campus groups and administrators to find funding to keep the program running.
The program, which has intermittently run for six years, provides free copies of The Washington Post, The New York Times and USA Today to the campus community. It cost $14,000 last year and was cut from GUSA’s fiscal year 2015 budget.
GUSA President Trevor Tezel (SFS ’15) originally supported keeping the program and is now working with his administration to find alternative funding.
“Ultimately, we’re still seeking short-term solutions to keep the program going, understanding that we might be working on a very short timeline,” Tezel said. “We are still reaching out to relevant academic and administrative departments to see if we can get short-term solutions. We’re also looking at the long-term sustainability of the program. We’re doing that right now working with various different individuals on both the executive and senate side.”
According to GUSA Deputy Chief of Staff Megan Murday (SFS ’15), GUSA sent out a survey in a campus-wide email Monday about media readership that has received over 140 responses.
“The survey hopefully will gauge student interest, what sort of outlets are most convenient to them, something that they’d be most likely to use,” Murday said. “We know that The Washington Post and The New York Times are very popular. We’re gauging undergraduate interest and seeing if it would really be worth the money that we’d be putting into it.”
GUSA’s Intellectual Life Chair Shweta Wahal (SFS ’16) said that the survey will help the GUSA administration decide how to approach the issue. It is considering both print and online newspaper subscriptions, depending on the feedback that it receives.
“We’re trying to find out what would be most effective, whether it would be to collaborate with university departments and have it be something that everyone has access to,” Wahal said. “We’re also benchmarking with other universities. For example, Case Western University has the students pay a media fee to fund their collegiate readership program.”
Some student groups have expressed interest in contributing to the program’s funding, according to Murday.
“[The Graduate Student Organization] was interested in looking into ways that they could help with funding,” Murday said. “We’re really trying to find the money allocation for the program if it’s not through GUSA’s budget.”
Tezel said that he has received positive feedback from university administrators, as well.
“What we’ve found when talking informally to a lot of different departments is that they’re very supportive of the program and they want to see it continue in the future,” Tezel said. “We’re getting a positive reception, but really what we need to do is make sure we can translate that into financial commitments, and that’s what we’re doing right now.”
According to Murday, the program is an important part of academic life on campus.
“I think that so much of an education at Georgetown is rooted in practicality and how we’re going to apply this to the real world,” Murday said. “In order to effectively do that in the classroom, we need to be cognizant of national and international affairs and stay current in news because a lot of my professors expect us to read a newspaper every morning and be up to date, so that when we talk about different issues in class, we know the latest news on them.”
Patty-Jane Geller (COL ’17) said that she would benefit from an online subscription.
“Personally, I read my news on my phone or on the computer, so I wouldn’t really ever pick up a physical newspaper, but reading the news is pretty important to me,” she said. “If there were actual subscriptions that we could use online, I would really like that. It would be really convenient and a good use of money.”
